A pink-and-white gardening glove was missing Thursday morning from Jeannine
Goche's front porch. But there was absolutely no mystery about who had taken it.
Willy, the cat who loves gloves, had struck again.

Willy, a
1-year-old cat is photographed, July 20, 2006, with a display of several
pairs of garden gloves that he took from unknown yards in his neighborhood
in Pelham, N.Y. Willy has brought home nine pairs of gloves and five
singles over several weeks laying them on his owners' front or back
porches. [AP Photo]

"It has to be him," said
Goche, an attorney. "I've heard about him."

As if the gardeners of Pelham don't have enough to worry about, with the
rocky soil and the slugs and the big trees casting too much shade, a feline
felon has been sneaking into their back yards and carrying off gardening gloves.

Goche's flower-patterned number may soon take its place on the clothesline
that's strung across the front fence at Willy's home, which he shares with
Jennifer and Dan Pifer, their 19-month-old son Hudson and a mutt named Peanut
Chew.

Above the line is a sign that says, in words and pictures, "Our cat is a
glove snatcher. Please take these if yours."

On Thursday morning, nine pairs of gardening gloves and five singles were
strung up, nicely framed by the Pifers' flourishing tomato and basil plants.
Willy, looking innocent, was playing with a beetle under the Subaru in the
driveway and occasionally dashing after Hudson.

"This all started about the time people began working in their gardens, I
guess March or April," Jennifer Pifer said. "Willy would just show up with a
glove, or we'd see them on the front steps. I guess it's better than if he was
bringing home dead birds."

A friend, Claudia Bonci, said she was in the Pifers' kitchen recently and had
noticed a single gardening glove on the sidewalk.

"Jennifer was telling me all about how Willy was bringing home all these
gloves, and there was a small pile of them outside the door, and then here comes
the cat with a glove in its mouth, proud as could be, like he was giving me a
gift."

Some of the gloves really are gift-worthy.

"A lot of these looked brand new," said Pifer. "Some of them are really
nice."

She doesn't know how far afield Willy goes to find a glove, but she has
learned it takes him two trips to bring home a matched pair.

Willy, born to a stray last spring and taken in by the Pifers as a newborn,
stays out some nights but seems to assemble his collection in daytime raids.

"Mostly it happens on weekends, I guess when people are out gardening," Pifer
said. "Can't you just imagine people saying, `The gloves were right here,
where'd they go?'"

John Cassone, who lives and gardens across the street, said he isn't missing
any gloves. He uses "the big, heavy leather kind" and figures Willy, a wiry
type, isn't strong enough to drag them away.

Willy couldn't care less about the gloves after they're captured. On Thursday
he could not be enticed into a grab-the-glove game.

In winter, when gardening gloves are hard to find, Willy switches to his
offseason prey, dirty socks, which he brings from the laundry room.

"We find them in the hallway, on the stairs," she said. "I used to think,
`Oh, I must have dropped it on the way down.' But now I know better."

Despite his criminal nature, neighbors get a kick out of Willy. Cassone said
the cat likes to accompany the mailman up and down the block, all the way to
each front door. Willy also likes to climb trees and bat at the heads of people
below.

Since Pifer grows flowers and vegetables and herbs herself, isn't she tempted
to make use of the endless supply of garden gloves that arrive at her doorstep
free, shipping included?

"No," she said, a bit sadly. "I do a lot of gardening but I don't use
gloves."